The paper is an attempt to identify the issues meant to facilitate and intensify the intercultural dialogue, appreciated by the author as being the most fruitful way to build both a world and an intercultural cohabitation. The final result of such ample, sinuous and difficult process is, in the author’s conscience, a social and cultural space that he calls a common space of active cohabitation. The author’s hypothesis is that what we call the “socio-cultural identity” of the Romanian nation (as a part of the European and universal diversity) can only be the result of the life and activity of all the participants to the act of living together; the author endeavours (wants) to convince the others that the Rroma people also had a valuable contribution to this act. The lack of documents and other reliable sources determines the author to go to the collective memory or other sources, from which he deduces ideas and induces assertions that make this paper a debatable, even disputable one, in fact, a serious invitation to deeper researches, studies, investigations and common reflections, without prejudice. Their outcome would be the objective way towards truth and profound knowledge, without false amiabilities.

This article deals with the relationship between social and technological innovations in the area of environmental protection. The theoretical question is whether some social innovations can be interpreted as innovative responses to former technological and economic innovations, especially to the deleterious effects of the latter. In other words, social innovation can be seen as having a corrective function in relation to those economic and technical processes which have yielded, over time, negative social outcomes. Green consumption, conceived as a form of consumption aimed at preventing the effects of environmental toxins on one’s body, can be seen as a innovative response to the problems of environmental health.

The issues around the global economical crisis and its effects are currently under much attention. In this context, Professor Cătălin Zamfir opens the debate on the Romanian Crisis, initiated in the Social Innovation online Journal, by bringing to your attention the nature of our crisis and some directions for surpassing it.

The Romanian Academy received in June 2009 the visit of an official delegation of the Chinese Academy in social sciences. The visit set the scene for discussing the Impact of the economical crisis. The Chinese and Romanian experts presented their findings. Due to the importance of the data they presented, we selected one of the two papers: internal migration and the evolution of the middle class and we present it below.

The paper analyses the CSR in the context of Europeanization of Romanian society, a society characterized by tendentious modernity. The first part of the paper analyzes the CSR in Romanian society. CSR is present in Romanian business society, but the multinational corporations really posses the necessary abilities. CSR has been imposed basically rather as a fashion, than as a result of a real need of Romanian society. In the second part I study the RSC in relation with capitalist evolution in evoluția Romania. The capitalism is re‐invented in the context of the post‐communist Romania. This type of capitalism is the outcome of privatization which has been regulated through legal proceedings and not as a consequence of organic historical and social evolution structure. I n the third section I analyze the tendentious modernity as a type of evolution towards norms and principles of modernity. The fundamental problem of tendentious modernity is the degree and level of the extension of modernity in society. In countries characterized by tendentious modernity only part of minority groups, of elites, supports the values of modernity and takes advantage of them. In return, the larger population is only superficially touched by modernity and continues to live in the spirit of ancient values. In a tendentious modernity society, modernity is a trend, which coexists with obsolete institutional forms. Tendentious modernity penetrates slowly and painfully through the complicated network of socio‐institutional structures of the traditional, patriarchal society. There is a discrepancy between the European CSR and the CSR applied in Romania. The alignment of CSR to the domestic needs depends on the level of Europeanization of Romanian society, which could be measured in terms of the degree of compatibility between the interests of multinational corporations and the social and institutional Romanian Europeanized structures.

Calculating the poverty rate, determining eligibility for social welfare benefits or any other analysis of the well‐being of families or households results in the transformation of these persons (rather than from the perspective of the size or structure of the family unit) into comparable families /households formed from so‐ called “equivalent adults”. This transformation is made with the help of equivalence scales. Under the chosen equivalency scale, large households are “pushed” into poverty if an abrupt scale is used, similarly with smaller households if the scale is too straight. Which equivalence scales are most used? Under what circumstances does this scale correspond to the actual usage in our country’s households? Should different percentages be applied for children, elders, different genders or residential environment? Does the equivalency scale change over time? Here are a few questions we have tried to answer, while estimating an equivalency scale which reflects the actual behavior of our country’s households regarding consumption.

This article is intended to support an early discussion around the social innovation topic in the Romanian academic debate initiated by the Research Institute for Quality of Life, through its project “Social Innovation ‐ factor in socio‐economic development”. In the preface to this discussion and theorization of the field, a review of existing literature and a critical analysis of the concepts covered so far in this thematic map prove to be necessary. The article advances a definition of the social innovation concept, continues by emphasizing aspects related to product and process in social innovation and concludes by stressing the alternative perspectives that can be developed in a theory of social innovation.

The study explores the causes and consequences of “Freudian repression”, as analyzed by Billig (1999), in communism and post‐communism. The repression of unacceptable, shameful, evil, painful thoughts from the conscious mind is considered in psychoanalysis a central process in the dynamic of personality. The focus is on the Freudian repression that might be generated by ideological restrictions and filters, which are imposed through the brutal terror systemically enacted by the specialized institutions of the communist regimes. The study advances the idea that in communism the motivated self‐deceit has become a mass‐phenomenon through repressing and hiding in the unconscious mind of all the individual’s authentic feelings, thoughts, experiences and expressions that were different and especially opposed to the official representations, narratives, discourse, ideological principles and political authority.

Due to the duration, depth, and relational expansion of the ideologically based repression of the authentic thoughts, feelings, experiences and expressions of individuals and communities, a schizogenic social context was generated in time. Such a context was favorable to the erosion of self‐love and of the love of the other and to the replacement of these emotional bonds with mistrust, disdain and hatred toward oneself and others. The ideological principles and the political algorithm restrained systematically the individual autonomy and enhanced the de‐individuation process.

Based on the fundamental role of language in the Freudian repression (Billig, 1999) the study attempts to identify the major types of motivated self‐deceit practiced in communism and the main types of motivated self‐deceit that emerged in post‐communism. These types are discussed in relationship with the long‐term Freudian repression of the authentic thoughts, feelings, expression and experiences of the individuals and communities. Th e ideological roots of Freudian repression in communism was strongly associated with the drastic limitation of the free dialogue between self and other, and of the interdiction of the free expression in public places.

The motivated self‐deceit that involves the cover up of the censorship actions and traces and is ideologically rooted differs thought its content and mechanisms from the motivated self‐deceit that is nurtured mainly by sexual and interpersonal tensions. The ideologically rooted self‐deceit threatens the social and cultural identity of the individual, one’s own cardinal moral, religious and political values. The answering process to the essential questions such as “Who am I?” and “Who are We?” is disturbed. Once the individual becomes a tool of an ideology of terror supported by specialized institutions the chances of self‐hatred are increased and the hatred of others increases too. The ideologically motivated self‐deceit that emerged during communism has long term‐consequences that continued in post‐communism. The fragmented existential identity, the distorted existential identity, and the pressure to protect evil secrets are considered to be associated with these consequences.

The Research Institute for the Quality of Life has recently hosted Catalin Mamali’s presentation on Manifestoes and political genealogies. Historical experiments rooted in the Manifesto of Communist Party and the Civil Disobedience. This paper is a critical assessment of this presentation.

Competent voices, like A. Giddens in UK (2006) and C. Zamfir in Romania (2009), claim that sociology, as an academic science, is declining in prestige, public interest and significance of its researches. This paper argues that we face a social process whose causes are rooted in the changes that took place in the relationship between sociology (the scientific research of modernsociety) and politics. Sociology was significant as a science as much time as different groups of politicians confronted themselves on the issue of the best distribution system of social andeconomic resources of the society. In such conjunctures, alternative sociological paradigmsdeveloped in order to support the legitimacy of alternative distribution systems. The mechanism is as old as known political history, and it had its “ups”, when alternative political options foralternative distribution systems were competing, and “downs”, when a dominant distribution system was unchallenged by alternative political options. The last decades illustrate times whena politically unchallenged distribution system – the “free market capitalism” – dominated both the political action, and the academic and everyday ideology, via globalization and post communism. The present financial crises and the economic recession it produces, both indeveloped and in developing economies like Romania’s, are questioning the dominating distribution system, but sociology and sociologists are poor prepared for a debate and, thus, forrenewal.